No, he could not be blamed, if the note were true, because he definitely did not have an attractive, provocative wife to come home to these days, and Lord knows there are plenty of attractive, provocative women running around all over the place, without bulging bellies and without complaints about backaches. I must stop complaining about backaches.
He could be blamed, if you wanted to look at it another way, and if there was any truth at all in that stupid note, he could be blamed, but I’m not blaming him if it’s true, and I certainly won’t make an issue of it, but goddamnit, why didn’t whoever sent the note just shut up about it, I mean who cares? I mean who wants to know about such a thing, not now certainly, not now when I don’t even feel like a woman. God, how could I hold him now if such a thing were true, if that note were telling the truth, how could I hold him when I don’t look like a woman, don’t act like a woman, don’t even feel like a woman. I’m just some sort of growing parasite, just a big blob of, of protoplasm, a nothing, a thing, he could be blamed for not standing by now, of all times, he could be blamed, but I won’t blame him if there is another woman, the way the note says, provided the other woman is just a temporary thing, provided she’s another woman only as long as I’m not a woman.
But I can’t believe it, she thought, not Rick.
Although in my fifth month he did dance a lot with Helen that night of the alumni gathering, though he was a bit high that night, and God knows I didn’t feel very much like dancing, still he did dance with her a lot, and she seemed to be enjoying it immensely, but she’s probably to blame there and not him, if a man feels like dancing and his wife just feels like vegetating. Still she seemed to be enjoying it a good deal more than she should have been, I’ve never really liked Helen anyway, and I don’t remember if Rick enjoyed it or not, he was drinking, anyway, no, not Rick, and especially not now. Rick is, well yes he is. Rick is honorable.
But, damnit, why would anyone send me a note like that? Oh damnit, why would anyone have to do that?
Now start crying, sissy, that’s all we need, right here on the street, go ahead, start crying like a damned fool over a stupid note which was maliciously sent and which doesn’t mean a damned thing, and which can’t be true, which certainly cannot be true.
She didn’t start crying, nor did she forget the smoldering coal which was the note. Nor did she mention it to Rick.
The second note came a week later. She fished it out of the mailbox, and when she saw the neatly typed MRS. RICHARD DADIER, she felt a twinge of panic, felt the same dread she’d experienced a long while ago when her Secret Pal was at work. Only this was a Secret Enemy, and she studied the flap of the envelope and found no return address, and she knew this would be another note, and she was tempted to throw it away without opening it. But she did open it, and when she’d unfolded the sheet of white paper, she looked at the neatly centered, neatly typed message, and it read:
AT SCHOOL
ALL DAY, EVERY DAY
That was all, just that, but it started a new train of thought. She had never considered this before, never visualized the school itself as a trysting place. She always looked upon it as a place of labor, but now she began remembering stories about places of labor, stories about men and their secretaries, and she also began remembering Rick’s part in an attempted rape long ago, and she began thinking about the woman who had provoked that rape, and Lois Hammond began taking shape in her mind.
She put her out of her mind, and she told herself this was all nonsense and probably a joke one of their friends was playing, but she could not think of any of their friends who would indulge in such morbid humor when she was in her ninth month. She toyed with the idea of Rick himself sending the notes, building to some kind of misunderstood surprise, the kind of surprise where he could say, “Why sure there’s another woman! The baby, honey! It’s going to be a girl, don’t you know?” But Rick wanted a boy, and he wouldn’t joke about something he wanted, and he wouldn’t make a joke like that anyway when she was in her ninth month, and besides the second note wouldn’t make any sense i£ that were the explanation, unless the surprise he’d planned was too intricate for her to comprehend, but still he wouldn’t make a joke like that, not Rick.
Nor would Rick play around with another woman.
Unless the other woman were at fault, the way Helen had been that night at the alumni gathering, in which case you couldn’t do anything but hope your man was strong enough to resist, and Rick was that, if nothing else, though he hadn’t resisted very damned hard that night with Helen. Dancing is only dancing, though, for God’s sake. Let’s not make a federal case out of a few waltzes. And a few fox trots. And a few polkas and even a few lindys, even though he doesn’t like to lindy, he lindied that night, but he was high remember.
AT SCHOOL. ALL DAY, EVERY DAY the note Said, all in nice, simple language, but after all what could a man do at school, all day, every day, even every other day? There wasn’t even a co-ed teachers’ lunchroom, unless Rick were lying about the talks with Solly Klein and Lou Savoldi and all the other men teachers, and all his other time was occupied with classes and duty periods and whatnot. Of course, no one said you had to eat in the teachers’ lunchroom. Oh, nonsense I Picture Rick in some quiet, out of the way place, holding hands with that Hammond woman. I don’t even know what she looks like.
And I’m sure Rick doesn’t either.
And I can’t see him holding hands with her. And even if he were holding hands, what’s so terrible about that?
Well, maybe it is terrible. After all, there’s nothing wrong with my hands. You can sell the rest of me for scrap, but there’s nothing wrong with my hands, or has it gone farther than hands, and if that’s the case I’m out of the competition. What does Lois Hammond look like? What does the other woman usually look like?
A slinky bitch (you mustn’t call her bitch, you don’t even know the girl) a slinky bitch in a slinky black nightgown with a cigarette holder in her long, tapering fingers. That’s the way it is in the Ladies’ Home Journal serials. Her kisses are like...
Stop it, just stop it. You’re hanging him without even telling him about the notes, without even discussing it with him, and you’ve always discussed everything else in your married life together, everything, even when you had to ask him what to do, because you didn’t know what to do, not with your hands and not with anything, even though the anything was worth something then and not worth a damn now. Well, you did discuss it, and it was harder to discuss that, surely, than it would be to discuss these stupid notes. And you’ve leapt from hand-holding to kissing to God knows in the space of three minutes. And you know what to do with your hands now, that’s a cinch.
And that makes me competition for a slinky bitch in a slinky black nightgown (and stop calling her bitch because you don’t even know her and she’s probably a girl who goes to church every Sunday — Helen goes to church every Sunday, too — and who wouldn’t want your husband if you offered him on a silver platter) and besides there is no truth whatever to these damned silly notes, and I think I’ll burn them.
She did not burn them.
She sat now in the kitchen of her housing project apartment, and she stared at the kitchen clock on the beige wall (the walls you were not allowed to paint or paper unless you wanted to lose the deposit you placed with the Authority when you took the apartment) and the notes were before her on the kitchen table, three notes now, and the third note read: